Ignore the Hype: The Scottish Election will be Won on the Ground
To read some of the more lurid political commentary you’d think the outcome of the Holyrood election was already clear – Alex Salmond’s charismatic display in the televised leader’s debate has consigned the Gray-led Labour Party to defeat, Annabel Goldie’s ‘nation’s favourite auntie’ act sees the Tories set fair for a decent night, the Lib-Dems face wipe-out and the Greens may well pick up something close to the seven seats they won in 2003.
But while these are nice simple narratives for the media, and the personalisation of politics around party leaders helps fill a void left by the absence of political difference (at least between Labour, Lib-Dems and SNP), do they reflect the reality of this election?
The Scottish system is neither presidential (unfortunately for Alex Salmond) nor the first-past-the-post system that most of the political class are used to. As I know to my cost, as someone who was unexpectedly elected as a Green MSP in 2003, the quirks of Scotland’s PR system can create some very unexpected outcomes.
Perhaps the biggest quirk is the ‘constituency bonus’ effect. Take, for example, West of Scotland Region in 2007. Labour and the SNP got a similar share of the vote (34% on the list for Labour compared to 28% for the SNP), yet Labour finished with eight constituency seats to the SNP’s one constituency and four list seats.
This is because, with many more constituency (73) than list (56) seats available, if you dominate the constituency results in a region (as Labour has repeatedly done in West Central Scotland) there simply aren’t enough list seats to go round to balance the results. So Labour’s series of constituency wins with fairly small shares of the vote in the West Region (David Whitton won with 31% in Clydebank, Trish Goodman won with 36% in Renfrewshire West, as did Ken Macintosh in Eastwood, and Jackie Baillie won with 38% in Dumbarton) translated into 50% of the total seats (eight out of 16).
So for Labour the task is clear – hold the constituencies they have and win back the ones they’ve lost with narrow margins since 1999 (places like Glasgow Southside, Cunninghame North, Kilmarnock, Falkirk West, Edinburgh Eastern and Southern, Almond Valley) and they start to build an unassailable lead in Parliament – no matter how well ‘Alex Salmond for First Minister’ works for the SNP on the list.
Therefore it is the ground game that matters for Labour – the door knocking and canvassing that will persuade Labour voters who stayed at home in 2007 to come out in 2011. The air war is important for morale, but winning the constituencies is what will deliver victory.
Equally, this is why the clear SNP momentum may not be enough to deliver victory. The SNP surge in 2007 failed to winkle hard-working local Labour MSPs like Sarah Boyack, Malcolm Chisholm, Lewis McDonald and Jackie Ballie out of their constituencies, despite the SNP beating Labour on the list in these seats. The same was also true of Lib-Dem MSPs like JF Munro, Jamie Stone, Jeremy Purvis, Mike Rumbles and Nicol Stephen, who also succeeded locally despite being out-polled by the SNP on the list – but more of that later.
And what of the Conservatives? They are doing alright aren’t they? Well, for the Conservatives (outside the South of Scotland) the other big quirk of the Scottish PR system – the all or nothing effect of the list – comes into play. Put simply, get above 6% on the list in a region and you will get an MSP (and with over 12% you should get two). Fall much below 6%, and certainly if you fall below 5%, and you face wipe-out.
In a region like Glasgow the Tories, with 6.6% last time, have very little cushion. In Lothian, with 13%, a drop of a couple of percentage points would see a 50% reduction in the number of Tory MSPs. So for the Tories even slight slippage could hit several regional tipping points and result in a major reduction in MSPs.
Which brings us to the Greens – perhaps the best demonstration of the all or nothing nature of the list – from one MSP in 1999, to seven in 2003, back down to two in 2007 (and Patrick Harvie, with 5.1% in Glasgow sneaking in on the narrowest of margins, largely thanks to Nicola Sturgeon winning Govan and a divided socialist vote), it has been a rollercoaster ride.
In 2003 Second Vote Green was a masterstroke, capturing the public mood to do something interesting with their secondary vote in what appeared to be an entirely predictable election. By 2007 the other parties had woken up to the need for a list strategy, emphasising that the list vote was as, if not more important than the constituency vote. The SNP demonstrated how well this could be done with their own masterful use of ‘Alex Salmond for First Minister’. In 2011 the Green attempt to re-use Second Vote Green may flounder in the face of other parties’ clued-up approach to the list. But the penalties for falling short are huge – on 4% nationally, if Labour (and Galloway) do well in Glasgow, the Greens may go back to one seat. With 5% nationally, Eleanor Scott returns, taking the Green total to three MSPs. On 6% virtually every region could have a Green MSP…
And then there’s the Lib-Dems. ‘Lib-Dem campaign dead in the water’ pronounces the latest Green press release (even though it is about Scottish Water). However, the Lib-Dem tactic has always been to win pockets of support and, once elected, build such a strong sense of voter identification that it is hard to see people like Margaret Smith, Mike Rumbles, Iain Smith and even Tavish Scott himself losing. People like Alex Cole-Hamilton are also working their constituencies so hard they could still buck the trend. Again, for the Lib-Dems, the ground game is all.
So is the election done and dusted? No way. Forget the air war, the presidential debates, the media frenzy. In a relatively low turnout election it is all about who is doing the work on the ground to win the constituencies or breach the magic 6% hurdle.
sorry – in the first line “the interest” should
be “with interest”
I’ve read the interest the discussions on pockets of votes in Mid-Scotland and Fife. As a Kinghorn resident, I would like to point out that the southern Fife coastal towns (particularly Burntisland) have seen quite major changes (including demographically) since the last election, and are another area where the Green Party would likely have a chance of picking up several hundred votes.
I support George Gealloway’s relection in Scotland
So what’s better 2 greens holding the balance of power or 7 inneffectual ones?
Stir,stir!
Stuart – indeed, I am not saying anything new here – Mark has been focussing on Dunblane and Bridge of Allan for 4 years now (well, and before that).
Yes that is a key question. I am increasingly of the opinion that (perhaps overly stung by Lib Dems in Norwich South) it’s paper through doors, in vast quantities, that makes the difference in the closing weeks – knocking in the years before, knocking up the prob Gs in the areas you are targeting on polling day, but in the weeks before that, as many leaflets as you can. And my point is that I would rather have no extra leaflets (apart from the freepost) in most of a region, and then do 4 extras in the target bits of the region, than spread ourselves thin and do 1 in most places and 2 in lots of others.
Sticking with the MS&F theme. Mark is well aware of where to target- and has the data to back it up, both for Green voters and large areas of urban areas where the Lib Dems were strong in 2007.
Branches should be able to target within the Region, but its HOW they target that is more the issue. Is that simply putting literature through the door, or physically knocking on doors and talking to people? One covers a larger area and quicly, the other needs even more concentrated targetting.
James – don’t rush to get so defensive – Mark is basically saying that your messaging on cuts is right. His comment above reads to me like he’s saying he supports your messaging strategy.
Jim – my point is precisely that we can’t knock on every door in MS&F, and so we should focus on the pockets of votes that we can win – in MSF, these are St Andrews (and other bits of NE Fife), Dunblane & Bridge of Allan (and Stirling more broadly) and, arguably, bits of Perth. Winning 500 extra votes in St Andrews + 500 in Dunblane + 500 in the streets around the North Inch in Perth (or perhaps in bits of the Highland Perthshire ward – Dunkeld & Aberfeldy and places) is key to victory.
I agree we shouldn’t change strategy this close in, I was just responding to your question about what the implications of Mark’s article were for Greens. And that’s my answer. (& I don’t know what the details of the election strategy is, but the building of pockets of support was the strategy agreed by ECC in 2008, back when I was on it).
Exactly Adam, our strategy is target to win, and has been for a number of years. That’s been shown to work, by the Lib Dems and by Greens down South, and it means building pockets of support and making sure those pockets turn out, rather than spreading our resources evenly across a whole region/constituency/ward and failing to get the necessary density of communication to make people vote for us.
I think this is an argument that can’t be repeated often enough. Whatever it is any political party says, or believes, it’s very difficult to get elected without substantial ground-campaigning apparatus.
All too often this ground campaigning comes a long way down the priority for party leadership. Of course most people get into politics to do messaging or sending press releases.
When these activities come into competition with ground camapaigning it is essential that ground campaigning doesn’t lose out. Indeed, the tendency to avoid issues that might motivate activists is a major problem for most modern political parties.
Mark’s article is a useful reminder that ground campaigning is more important than all the sexier activities that people in politics enjoy. We should focus more on it, and appreciate ground campaigners more.
any news on the siblings war between SSP and Sharidenarity or has that been patched up?
Up the Greens!
Mark, you do know what our messages are, and they’re not about wasted votes. It’s about setting out a positive alternative to the cuts, based on fairer taxes and raising revenue from the wealthiest and big business. It’s about saying how we’ll pay for HE, unlike the empty promises of the other parties who say they’re against fees. And it’s about tying climate change to jobs and cutting bills with the insulation scheme.
It’s also about pointing out that whoever the FM is, they’ll need to work with someone: the choice is one of the Coalition parties or the Greens. Surprised none of that made it into your copy. You seem instead to want us to magic up hundreds of additional activists somehow.
Hi Jim, I don’t think Adam is suggesting knocking on every door in MS&F, or an entirely new strategy for the Greens in this election, but I think it is important that we understand the dynamics of the election and target what will actually make a difference.
Clearly with Labour and the Lib-dems working furiously to protect the constituencies they hold, and the SNP and Tories running personality-driven campaigns to win on the lists there is a real danger of another Green squeeze.
Your question was, however, “is there is a specific space with Labour voters to have them ‘lend’ us their second vote on the lists because Labour don’t care about it anyway?”.
I know that there were people – including, I believe, Jamie Stone, the former Lib-dem MSP for Caithness and Sutherland, who in pervious elections did the d’hondt calculations and realised that their party of choice couldn’t win on the list, so voted Green, partly to keep out the Nats. However, I am not sure that there were huge numbers of people who understood the additional member system sufficiently well to make this calculation.
If there was an election where you would expect to see this phenomenon it was 2007 – there was a real and genuine fear of the disaster of an SNP government, and the Greens had proved they could win on the list. However it didn’t work then – the closeness of the election kept Labour voters voting Labour down the card and the success of “Alex Salmond for First Minister” trumped the rather negative Green argument about wasted votes.
However, since 2007 a lot of the fear factor of the SNP has gone – they’ve run the country perfectly well. Labour can also point to George Foulkes, elected in Lothian on Labour list votes to prove that voting Labour on the list is not automatically a waste in the central belt. Finally, the fact that the Greens are seen by many Labour people as having propped up an SNP government for four years makes the ‘vote green to stop the SNP’ line a difficult sell. So, no, I don’t think asking Labour voters to lend us their votes is going to work.
So what should the Green do? Going back to 2003 the campaign had a positive message – second vote green – that suited the election. It didn’t say the other parties were rubbish, because it was crucial that people who were first and foremost Labour, SNP, Lib-dem and Tory voters felt that they could vote Green without shifting their primary allegiances.
So I think the challenge for the Greens is to articulate a powerful positive message that makes floating voters actually want to vote Green on the list, rather than a convoluted message about wasted votes, or knocking copy about other parties. I don’t think Second Vote Green will work as well this time, because it relied on the election being a forgone conclusion. But there are plenty of other positive reasons to vote Green. This message has to be repeated again and again in every broadcast and on every doorstep.
And yes, the Greens are a small party – but like all parties they do have concentrations of voters. Targeting these areas – and as you say Jim, taking a positive message directly to the voters – is the key.
Well, I don’t think we should have an air campaign only strategy – but actually the implications of the article aren’t quite about that.
Labour and the SNP have campaigns that depend on their constituency wins. The Greens aren’t standing in constituencies so how well we do does *not* depend on targeted work aimed at winning FPTP elections.
We’re effectively fighting different elections.
I think it would be great if we knock on every door in MSF – but we have to recognise that we’re a small party and that sort of work is about long term commitment not the last four weeks of the campaign.
Let’s not advocate an entirely new strategy four weeks to the day before the election – let’s build on the regional campaigns that are already happening.
Having said that I’m in favour of maximum canvassing. Meeting voters face to face? That’s my thing.
Hi Jim,
I think the lesson is that we shouldn’t be too obsessed with our air campaign. And we shouldn’t get bamboozled by the size of the regions – we need to be focussing on turning out voters in areas that we have strength in. In MS&F, 1500ish more votes or so would have put Mark Ruskell over the top last time (if I remember right) and I think the 2000 ish vote mark was the same for most of the seats we lost. For Mark, that’s 500ish votes each from St Andrews, Bridge of Alan/Dunblane, and Perth – not a massive ask of a few volunteers in each place. The big change from 2003 to 2007 was not in our baseline vote across each region, but the massive drop in our vote in key towns/wards.
Obviously keeping the baseline across the region where it was will depend on remaining in the media – we just can’t reach every house. But we can’t fall into the trap of thinking that an air campaign strategy is the same as an electoral strategy. We need to make sure we know who the 1500/2000 people in MS&F that will vote for us this time are, and make sure we have knocked on every one of their doors – The Scotsman and the TV won’t notice, and it won’t change the national narrative, but it will be the thing that could tip us over the top…
But what are the implications for the Greens? Are you saying there is a specific space with Labour voters to have them ‘lend’ us their second vote on thelsits because Labour don’t care about it anyway?
If so – how do we capitalise on that?
Lots of valid points. The last sentence sums it up perfectly. This election will be won in the marginals and it will be down to who gets out their core vote.